


Thirty-Seven Minutes

by ester_inc



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Blood Loss, Dream Sharing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Movie, Somewhat established relationship, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ester_inc/pseuds/ester_inc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five minutes in the real world is an hour in the dream, but time is relative, pain is in the mind, and sometimes dreams become nightmares. When an easy job takes a bad turn, Eames is left to deal with the fallout. He's a forger, a gambler, a liar and a cheat, and like all such men, he knows how to look after himself. Unfortunately, he's not the one who's down for the count, and Arthur? Arthur doesn't know when to quit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty-Seven Minutes

Easy, the extractor said about the job: in and out, no fuss. Eames did his part in the planning, made all the right noises. He was helpful, amiable and always accounted for, but half his attention was elsewhere. Arthur had taken the job as a favor for a friend, and Eames had followed him out of boredom and little else. He looked very fetching, Arthur did, slanted sunlight in his hair and a loosened tie begging to be removed and put to better use, but even that didn't entirely make up for the grating voice of the extractor, the vacant eyes of the architect, the itch at the back of Eames' head telling him to take off, find a casino, deal with Arthur's inevitable anger in the bedroom; twist those expensive, color-coordinated ties around Arthur's wrists and make him forget he'd ever had a reason to think ill of Eames

The job was beneath them, but Arthur was committed, and Eames stayed. Why? Why not. There were reasons aplenty, though none Eames particularly enjoyed. An unspoken promise was not an oath. A misguided sense of professional pride was for men like Arthur, who carried the weight of their chains with ease. Eames was taking the path of least resistance, which was merely another way of saying he'd allowed boredom to sink into his bones and fill him with inactivity.

On the sixth day, the scene was set. The chips were stacked up and ready to go, and Eames felt awake at last. Here it was, the spin of the wheel: win or lose.

It would be a good day. Eames could feel it in his bones, at his fingertips. Today he would win.

He liked that: a lie with just enough truth in it to give it wings. Every tomorrow would become today, and thus winning became a certainty. If Lady Luck sometimes needed a helping hand, Eames was happy to assist. He was a gambler, a liar, a forger, a cheat. If Lady Justice could not account for the coins stolen from her scales, was that the fault of the thief? Fortune favored the bold, and Justice was blind. Some tired old sayings had more truth to them than others, and those two were near and dear to every conman's heart, carved on the gravestone of every dead mother they swore by, scribbled in the margins of every Bible they laid their hands on.

Easy job, in and out. Win or lose. Another day, another gamble; a sure bet.

A sure bet. Now there was a lie if Eames ever heard one, but like every gambler to ever live, he enjoyed that combination of words a tad too much. Fortune was fickle, and perhaps he'd stolen from Justice one too many times, because when the chips came down on this particular job, they were not in his favor. 

Eames was in possession of a healthy sense of self-preservation. _Selfish bastard_ had been the verdict of many a friend and acquaintance, delivered with varying degrees of admiration and disgust. _Coward_ , one former colleague had spat out, but he'd been so perfectly appalled at Eames' sheer gall, so outrageously disbelieving, that Eames had taken it as a compliment. There was nothing wrong with calling it quits, cashing out, setting up another game another day. Eames liked taking chances, taking risks, but he also liked the sure thing, the ace up his sleeve, and he very much enjoyed the sound of _tomorrow_.

Arthur, now. Arthur, with his suits and his notebooks and his exit strategies, making people think he was the sort of person who thought of tomorrow and planned for the next year, the sort of person who had his whole life figured out. His confidence sold the impression, his typically impeccable research and well organized dossiers alleviating any lingering doubts. Arthur, everyone agreed, was an excellent point man. Sharp, meticulous and well dressed, with mild, respectful manners and admirable work ethic. If he came across as arrogant at times, if he sometimes pointed out a flaw in a way that wasn't quite as polite as people had come to expect from him, it was brushed aside as an aberration. It was Arthur; he probably hadn't meant it like that, and besides, he'd been right. Hadn't he? He usually was.

Arthur, Eames had learned, didn't have a clue. He had a sharp mind and sharp suits, it was true, never mind that he had more money than care for said suits and was prone to leaving the jacket lying around somewhere while he rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. There was no question that he was an excellent point man. His dossiers were indeed very well organized. His work ethic was the bane of Eames' existence.

What most people missed was this: Arthur lived in the now. He accepted life as it was, not as it could be. He didn't lack imagination, nor courage, nor vision, but he dealt with facts, not with possibilities. Arthur, as it was, enjoyed the sound of _today_.

In addition to his other qualities, he was, in fact, arrogant, and sarcastic, and unapologetic, and a little bit petty, very, very pretty, often selfish, sometimes mean, occasionally impatient, never cruel, and currently bleeding out from a gunshot wound.

"I will kill you," Arthur was saying through clenched teeth. "If you shoot me, I will _kill_ you when we wake up. I'm the dreamer."

They were staggering down another endless corridor in a labyrinth of an office building, pun intended, and Eames was supporting most of Arthur's weight. "No one bloody cares if the dream collapses." 

Arthur, the miserable sod, predictably opened his mouth to argue.

"Fine," Eames said truthfully; "I don't care. I'm waking you up."

"No, you won't. I care."

Eames didn't know how Arthur could be so steady and sound so certain when he had a hand pressed to his stomach, blood seeping through his fingers.

"There," Arthur said, indicating a stretch of wall that at a glance didn't seem any different from the rest.

Eames ran his fingers along the wall until plaster gave way to a smooth wooden surface and felt around for the handle. The passage remained invisible to the eye until they were on the other side with the door closed behind them.

Arthur crumbling to the floor in a barely controlled fall distracted Eames from his quick examination of the storage room they were in, the bare shelves lining the walls. He eased Arthur on his back and wasted a few seconds staring uselessly while Arthur blinked at the ceiling, dazed and in pain.

"We should abort," Eames said even as he took off his jacket, folded it a few times and slid it under Arthur's head.

"No," Arthur said immediately. "No, they need more time, and we still have a little over an hour left in the dream. I can make it."

He was pale, his hands trembling when Eames pulled them away from the wound. Eames peeled away the layers of wet cloth to get a better look and shook his head. When he slid a hand under Arthur's back to feel for an exit wound, he didn't find one. 

It should have been easy to ignore Arthur's wishes. Take a gun, pull the trigger, deal with the resulting hissy fit later. No sodding job wasn't worth suffering for, not like this.

"I can see you thinking about it," Arthur said, his voice softer, fainter. There was too much blood. He was going into shock. "Always ready to run, to quit and start over somewhere else. I don't mind. I don't mind, but you don't always get to take me with you when you run, and you don't get to quit me." He frowned and reached out with a shaky hand to clench at the fabric of Eames' shirt. "You don't get to quit me, Eames."

"I wouldn't dare," Eames said, and it came out sounding like a promise. 

Arthur's smile was small, smug, relieved, fond, and Eames hated him for it. The feeling was distant, removed, absolute. Eames was a man who felt the weight of his chains. He had the blueprints of every cage he'd ever escaped, every trap he'd fallen into. The worst thing about Arthur was that Eames could feel the walls closing in, and he didn't care. He'd fallen into a trap he didn't want to get out of, and at the back of his head, he could feel the person he'd been ten years ago, five years ago, despising the man he'd become; a willing captive.

He pried Arthur's hand away from his shirt so he could take it off and press the bundle of cloth against Arthur's stomach. Arthur made a choked sound and squeezed his eyes shut. His breath was starting to become labored.

Arthur swallowed, licked his lips. "How does it look?"

"Not good. You won't last an hour."

That smile again. "Better – my chances are better if you keep pressure on it. You're keeping pressure on it."

"You said you wanted to buy them time." Eames grit his teeth and pressed down harder, gaining one vicious spike of pleasure from the way Arthur's breath stuttered with pain before nausea wiped his mind clear of anger.

Arthur opened his eyes, a little unfocused. "You disagreed." 

Was it Arthur's fault that his approval had come to mean something to Eames? No. Eames had blindfolded himself.

"I still disagree," Eames said. "If those wankers need another hour to finish the job, they don't deserve it."

"It's not about what they deserve, it's about what needs to be done. I can last an hour."

Eames breathed in, the scent of blood thick at the back of his throat. "You'll be lucky to last twenty minutes."

Arthur lasted thirty-seven.

Fifteen minutes in, his skin was clammy and cold. His pulse was far too quick, and when Eames was finished counting and drew back his hand, red smears from his fingers remained, startlingly bright against the pale skin of Arthur's throat.

The shirt Eames was holding against the wound was soaked through.

"How long?" Arthur asked. His hand flailed a little and landed on Eames' thigh, curled up, like a dying animal seeking warmth. "How long?"

"We can end this right now," Eames said. "Say the word, and I'll make it stop. Let me make it stop."

"Not yet," Arthur said. His hand twitched. "Not until it's finished."

Eames looked at his blood-drenched hands, knew that all he was doing was prolonging Arthur's suffering, and felt oddly detached thinking about it. Time was a strange companion down here, stretching and snapping and leaping, an ill-trained dog on a leash. Eames had no control.

He should be able to fix it. They were in a dream. There had to be a way. But his head was empty, he couldn't think, and he knew that whatever he suggested, Arthur would veto. No experimenting in the middle of the job. Not when he was willing to die a slow and painful death to see it through.

At twenty-five minute mark, Arthur's pulse was thready, light and frighteningly fast. He alternated between restless silence and rambling conversation, gasping for breath between the words.

"You should go," he was saying. "Finish, help them finish the job."

"I'm not leaving," Eames said. His hands were steady and his voice was calm. He was cold to the core, as if it was his blood he was soaked in and not Arthur's.

"You're always leaving." Arthur was visibly agitated. He tried and failed to lift his head. "You always leave, but you also come back. Will you always come back? I'm not always sure. I like being sure."

"You like being right," Eames corrected him. "You like having all the facts at your disposal. I'm not a puzzle, Arthur. You can't figure me out and be done."

"I don't want to be done with you," Arthur insisted. "I want to be sure about you. I want you to always come back."

"Well, you needn't worry about that," Eames said, pushing sweaty, messy hair back from Arthur's forehead with one hand, the other still at the futile task of slowing down the blood loss. "I'm a sure bet."

"No, you're not," Arthur said with a breathy laugh that turned into a pained inhale, "but I do like the sound of that."

Of course he did. There was a reason he'd chosen a loaded die for a totem, and Eames hated him for that, too. They clicked together in all the places where they were different, and moved seamlessly along the lines where they matched. It was a comfortable cage Eames preferred not to acknowledge, and Arthur at times doubted the existence of.

Arthur lifted a hand to Eames' face, fleeting and weak, and seemed confused and worried at the smear of blood Eames could feel left behind on his cheek.

"Am I leaving you?" Arthur asked. "Am I dying?"

There were tremors in the fabric of the dream. They'd been there for the past five minutes, at least, and Arthur hadn't noticed. The mark, unmilitarized and unaware of the danger, wouldn't either.

"You're not dying, love. You're waking up."

Arthur's mental state was deteriorating, but the words still had an effect on him.

"No, promise me, not yet, if I pass out –"

Even if Arthur passed out, as long as he was alive, the basic structures of the dream would remain. As long as the dream held and the mark had bought into it, it didn't matter if the ceiling was full of hairline cracks and the colors were slowly leaching out, leaving behind a world that was dull, brittle and listless.

"I promise I won't shoot you awake," Eames said. "Happy now?"

"Happy," Arthur said, closing his eyes, and Eames wasn't sure if he was agreeing or just echoing the word.

He became increasingly lethargic and unresponsive. His pulse was weak, barely there. His heart was a hummingbird struggling to fly.

At thirty-five minutes, he lost consciousness. Eames stopped applying pressure to the wound.

"Before you showed up," he told Arthur, secure in the knowledge he wouldn't be heard, "I didn't think I had enough heart in me that anyone would bother to steal it. I was careless. I placed bets thinking I had the advantage, gambled away all my leverage. I knew you were playing with a loaded die, and still I though I could win." He lifted Arthur's limp, cold hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the back of it. "I wish I'd never met you."

Two minutes later, the dream collapsed.

-

Arthur kept touching his stomach. The gesture was absent-minded, tentative, and it was becoming a habit.

The job had been a qualified success, but the extractor had still laid into Arthur for the way the dream had started fading and eventually collapsed before the timer ran out, and the architect had stalked around their working space, gathering his things with an air of an angry poodle. Arthur had been calm and unapologetic, only saying that there had been unexpected complications. Eames had kept his back to them, not sure which one of them he thought would benefit the most from being punched in the face.

Even later, when it was just the two of them back at their hotel, Eames kept Arthur at the periphery of his vision. He didn't feel like resorting to violence, and he didn't feel like running out on Arthur, but in his mind there was something raw and still bleeding that he didn't want to think about, and as long as he didn't look at Arthur, he didn't have to.

In close quarters, it was impossible to avoid each other entirely, and so Arthur was constantly there on the edge of Eames' awareness. Constantly there, his hand drifting to his stomach. There, pressing down to feel the give of undamaged fabric and flesh. Rubbing his fingers together as if surprised to find them clean and dry.

Eames couldn't stand it. He spent ten minutes in the bathroom with the door locked, washing imaginary blood out of his own hands until his skin was red and tender, the little spaces under the tips of his fingernails so clean they hurt.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, Arthur was packing. He folded a shirt, quick, neat, efficient, placed it into the suitcase, touched his stomach, fleeting, brief, reassuring, reached for another shirt –

Three strides and Eames was next to him; he grabbed Arthur's wrist and the shirt fell to the floor.

"Stop it," he said, appalled at the roughness of his own voice.

"Stop what?" Arthur wrenched his wrist free. "Packing? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Stop touching it! You're fine," Eames snapped. He grabbed Arthur's arm and manhandled him across the room to the full-length mirror near the door. Once there, he spun Arthur around to face it and stood behind him, tugged his shirt out of his trousers and rucked it up. At no point did Arthur resist, perhaps too baffled by Eames' behavior to react to it. They were left staring at each other through the mirror, or rather, Arthur was staring at him, and he was staring at Arthur's stomach, at the smooth expanse of unbroken skin.

Eames covered as much of it as he could with one hand, a couple of fingers sliding partially under Arthur's waistband. He closed his eyes and rested his chin on Arthur's shoulder. "You're fine."

"It was just a dream," Arthur said, but his voice lacked bite.

"I know that."

Arthur didn't try to twist away, and Eames kept his eyes closed, kept his hand where it was, focusing on the gentle rise and fall of Arthur's stomach, the warmth of him.

"I'm sorry you had to watch me die," Arthur said after a long silence. "I'm sorry I made you do that."

Eames opened his eyes and leaned his cheek against Arthur's head, met his eyes in the mirror. "You've got a high opinion of yourself, thinking you can make me do anything."

"I don't remember all of it," Arthur said, "but some of it, yeah, I remember. You told me you're a sure bet."

"And you called me a liar."

"You are that. But that's not all you are." Arthur placed his hand on top of Eames'. "We've been playing games."

"I've been playing games," Eames said. It felt more like the truth, and he wanted to give Arthur at least that much. "Seeing how far I can run before I have to return. You've been waiting."

"No," Arthur said, and there was that smile, small, smug, relieved, fond. "I've been placing bets. Seeing how long it takes you to come back."

"You arrogant little fuck." Eames pressed a kiss against Arthur's cheek. "I didn't use to have anyone but myself to disappoint, and then you came along, with your suits and ties and your loaded goddamn die."

"I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not. You gonna to stop running any time soon?"

"I don't know," Eames said. "Why don't you tell me, Arthur. You're the one who keeps winning."

Arthur twisted a little so he could look at Eames directly, the corners of his eyes crinkling when he smiled. 

"The game is rigged," he said, "but you already knew that."

Eames did. He was all out of aces, and Arthur was the one dealing. He could run, and he could lie, but he couldn't escape this.

"The house always wins," Eames said, brushed his thumb against Arthur's jaw, and kissed him.

No defeat had ever tasted sweeter.


End file.
